In response to an email request for an interview, Senior Pastor Randy Fuller of New Beginning Church said, "I know you're trying to do a good job, but I'm not doing any interviews. Respectfully, Randy Fuller."

On Wednesday of this week, Fuller publicly posted on the church's website a recorded audio sermon where he said he was going to work with his and other Tuscaloosa County churches to get their congregations "mobilized" for a protest against the Tuscaloosa Arts Council and the business sponsoring the previously scheduled July 17 screening, The Left Hand Soap Company.

"Turn Me On, Dammit," directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen (and
based on a Norwegian book called "Turn Me On, Goddammit!"), is a critically acclaimed
coming-of-age tale about a 15-year-old Norwegian girl suffering local
ridicule after expressing a desire to explore her sexuality. A trailer
and descriptions of the film depict the character masturbating, engaging
in phone sex and exploring in other ways.

Fuller's sermon (titled ""The Darkside: Unmasking Satan, His Servants and His Strategies Part 1") was posted before he knew about the cancellation. [Listen to the entire recording here.] Fuller starts addressing the Arts Council approximately 49 minutes into the recording.

The pastor informs his listeners the Arts Council will screen the film, which he says depicts a girl experimenting with masturbation.

Fuller then says he would ask every member of his church, and every pastor of every church in the county, to take part in a drive to contact every member of the Arts Council and Tuscaloosa City Council about the matter, ask whether they are for or against screening the film and then print their names and answers in weekend full-page newspaper ads.

"I want to blow them up asking them that we stop this and that we stand against it," Fuller said. "We're going to raise more Cain than a broke-wing duck between now and July 17."

Fuller also says that once supportive politicians were identified, "we're going to make it our aim to unseat every one of them when the time comes around."

The pastor then turns his attention on the Left Hand Soap Company, owned by Erin "Soapy Jones," which was a sponsor of the screening and what Fuller called a "tree-hugging green group." Fuller says in the sermon that "if they want to get out of the line of fire," the business should discuss their sponsorship with the Arts Council.

"We're going to picket that business and we're going to picket the Bama Theatre," Fuller said.

Jones said in an interview today she would have no problem with a picket at her business. "I support the freedom of any individual to express themselves in our
society," she said. "Everyone has to do what's right for them, as citizens of a
democratic society."

On another front, in response to the recent events involving the Arts Council, a group of citizens are planning to voice concerns at the next City Council meeting on Tuesday, June 12, at 6 p.m.

Several community members say they have written open letters to Mayor Maddox, sent via mail and email, to which he's issued some replies. One letter-writer includes University of Alabama film professor Jeremy Butler, who said the last film ban he recalls there being in Tuscaloosa was John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" at the Ferguson Center, but the student film society rallied around it with a letter he wrote confirming its artistic worth.

He said X-rated films used to be shown on campus on occasion. In his letter, Butler expressed his disappointment in the lack of support the mayor's office showed for the Arts Council's screening.

Tuscaloosa's
public venues -- including the Amphitheater and PARA's parks and the
Bama Theatre -- should be encouraged to present diverse events from a
broad variety of perspectives," Butler wrote. "Just because these sites are funded with
taxpayers' money does not mean that every single event should adhere to
the moral sensibilities of every single taxpayer."

Butler notes that the mayor's response to local pastors' complaints should have included the fact that the film violates no laws and the screening is part of a diverse program of events from many moral, political, and aesthetic perspectives that are hosted at city and county venues.

"Pastor
Kearns may wish to publicly condemn its screening and may even lawfully
protest it through sermons, editorial writing, picketing, boycotts or
other means," he wrote "But the mayor's office should in no way empower one small
element of its larger constituency."

Other community members who wrote open letters to Maddox and City Council members include UA professor and Arts Council board member Andrew Grace, Holly Kennedy and Andrew Raffo Dewar, all of whom posted their letters publicly on Facebook.

View full sizeAndrew Grace is a University of Alabama film professor, documentary filmmaker and a member of the Tuscaloosa Arts Council board. (Ben Flanagan/al.com)

Listen to the following audio interview with Arts Council board member and University of Alabama film professor Andrew Grace about the decision to cancel the "Turn Me On, Dammit!" screening. Grace is a documentary filmmaker who co-founded the Bama Art House series. He wrote an open letter to Mayor Maddox on Thursday expressing his disappointment in the news that the film would not be shown publicly at the Bama.